Trips

Greetings from Baton Rouge, LA! Daph & I are relaxing in the hotel, while Chris is out getting food. As usual when traveling with a baby, it took a little longer than we expected. Daphne is sick (I’m going to blame her little Typhoid Mary cousins, Sydney & Avery. I’m kidding, I don’t have any proof they were sick, it’s just a common occurrence for people to get sick after visiting with them) and she was so needy last night and today it was nearly impossible for us to get anything done around the house. Unfortunately that means Chris will have to pick up the slack later this week when he goes back to B’ham. I’ll be glad when this week is over.

Lucky for us, Daphne was in good spirits the whole time we were in Chicago. She did very well on her first flight and for the most part was great, even though all her feeding and nap times were completely screwed up. We spent the weekend at my Aunt Jackie’s house and went to the big family reunion picnic and a 1st birthday party for my cousin’s son. The picnic was held just a few blocks from where we lived in Oak Forest, not that I remember the park. Family picnics were a big thing for my grandfather’s generation and about 5 years ago his remaining 4 siblings (he was one of 7) and my Aunt Jackie got together and started them up again after many years. I swear for the first hour we were there I didn’t recognize a single person. Luckily they had name tags indicating who each person was related to. And honestly, the focus was on the Cubs-White Sox game and there wasn’t much interaction between the various families.

Eventually my cousins started to show up. It was cool to see how everyone had changed over the last ten years and meet their kids. My cousins Heather and Trish both have 3 kids each and they look exactly like them. We then went to my cousin BJ’s house. (Actually he goes by Bruce Jr. now, which is a good thing. BJ is kind of an unfortunate nickname these days.) They had 30+ kids and 90+ adults for a 1 year old’s birthday. Holy crap. And the best part? It was mainly family. Yep, all those Irish Catholic relatives and their big families. I hadn’t seen BJ, or my cousins Mike & Jeff in probably 12 years. We didn’t stay long, just enough to make an appearance and head back to Jackie’s for some leftover Aurelio’s pizza and margaritas. And yes, my dad & I (the Southerners) brought the margarita mix and tequila. Jackie and her husband are more the NPR/fine wine set and probably don’t drink margaritas that often.

I think the best part of the weekend was looking at old photographs. My cousin Helen gave me a copy of a photo of my dad’s mom. She passed away when he was 13 and honestly, I didn’t really know what she looked like. I also saw a few more photos of my Aunt Pat, who passed away before I was born. And learned that my grandfather (who used to play professional baseball) liked to dress up as a woman for Halloween. Weird, huh? And more information than I really needed, actually. Looking at pictures of my dad as a kid always cracks me up. You know that commercial for the Orlando tourism board with the father that becomes a kid again? It reminds me of my dad. His little boy pics look like someone Shrinky Dinked a 45 year old businessman.

I have more I could say, but I really need to wind down. Chris just flipped on the TV and the 2004 OU/LSU Championship game was on. Coincidence? Nah, I think Baton Rouge is taunting us.

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